Entertainment

1:44 pm

Thu August 29, 2013

New 'Fusion' News Network Will Attract Young Viewers With Humor

Fusion will be the English speaking child of the ABC network and Spanish language powerhouse Univision. In late October, it will start broadcasting from Doral in what it says is the largest newsroom in the world.

Governor Rick Scott was there to celebrate a new business with 600 new jobs. But it may also represent the cultural sea change that ended some Republican political, careers in 2012. Univision president Cesar Conde says, in this building, Univision will continue to broadcast exclusively in Spanish. But Fusion will speak in English to multicultural young people.

"This building will be in many ways a microcosm of the new American reality. It will be a microcosm of what we are living today in this country", Conde said.

Getting that young audience has been the despair of programmers, but Fusion is taking a crack at it, partly by hiring sardonic young news producers like Angela Barajas, who left Channel 4 news to work here.

"We're not gonna cover stories like everybody - we are looking to be young, innovative, irreverent and those are key words highlighted in our own mission statement", Barajas said.

The big gun in Fusion's arsenal is this guy, Billy Kimball, who wrote episodes of the Simpsons and Seinfeld and spent years writing and producing late night comedy. He's Fusion's new programming officer.